An Anchor
Notes
Transcript
PRAY
How well do you know yourself? I’ve been reading up this week and there’s a bunch of studies that have been done which show that by and large, people like you and me are in fact very bad at knowing what we are truly like, deep down inside. What happens, these studies have found, is that people tend to convince themselves in their own mind that they’re good people; we overestimate our own generosity and downplay our own faults.
This then means that for most of the time, we walk around our lives with a loose grip on what we are actually like in our most precious relationships. This can be disastrous if it goes unchecked, and can cause real trouble in marriages, friendships, and work relationships.
But the bigger danger is that if this is how we live our lives, unexamined and unaware, then we can totally mess up where we stand with God. When it comes to our friendships and relationships, there might be some temporary or fixable problems that might arise when we overestimate ourselves. But when it comes to God, we’re talking about eternal categories. That means that self-awareness is one of the most important and urgent things we can cultivate in ourselves.
Here in Hebrews 3, the author makes that exact point:
12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
The word he uses there: “See to it” is an act of keeping an eye on yourself, a watch. Drill down, he says, right to the core of yourself, your heart, and be aware of what’s going on in there. I think what he has in mind is what Proverbs tells us to do:
23 Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Your heart is a Biblical picture used to talk about the deep down set of desires and character traits and habits that shape the rest of your life. And Hebrews 3 says that your heart is in a constant state of leading you either towards or away from God.
12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
It’s what the quotation from the Psalm calls a ‘hard heart;’ if your heart is fed on sin and unbelief, it is hardened, and will lead you away from God and listening to him. The flipside, he goes on to say, might surprise you.
13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
The cure to a hard heart, he says, is genuine Christian community. Instead of a heart cultivated by sin and unbelief, we are to dedicate ourselves to looking out for each other. Genuine Christian community is done with a view to build up - that’s what ‘encourage’ or ‘exhort’ means. And here he says it’s a thing that needs to be done constantly - daily. This is why it’s so essential for us to be involved in church life throughout the week, it’s why things like growth groups are so central to the life of a church. It’s there where we forge trusting relationships into which we can encourage one another.
So I want to challenge you even at this early point in the passage - what is going to be your next step to encouraging others in their relationship with Jesus? Is it putting up your hand to join a growth group? Is it starting one? Is it taking time to make a phone call or asking that awkward question after church - where are you at with Jesus right now? Cultivating the habit of encouragement starts small, but will thoroughly bless you.
Over the next section, he unpacks why its so important for us to be checking our hearts and encouraging each other. Why do we need this?
First, he says, it’s because pride is poison.
Pride is Poison
Pride is Poison
Here he pulls up an example from the Psalm he’s quoting. In salvation history, you’ll remember the story, God saved a people for himself out of Egypt. They were slaves, and he brought them out and showed them and Egypt his might and power.
15 As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.”
But afterwards, he said, there was a rebellion. Who rebelled?
16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness?
These people he saved out of Egypt and brought into the wilderness were the ones who rebelled. They were the same people; they’d tasted of God’s salvation, but they didn’t stick with God, they got sick of him.
What the author is saying to these Hebrew Christians is that the pattern of our sinful hearts is to take God’s salvation for granted, to be prideful in our position as followers of Christ, and not to remember that there is a danger of letting go. These Israelites made it out into the wilderness, but...
18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
They failed to enter into the rest that was promised them, the land, because of their unbelief. It didn’t matter that they had the outward badge of being an Israelite, if inwardly they strayed from God, they were lost.
We need to constantly remind each other to check our hearts for unbelief and bitterness, because we have the same hearts as the Israelites. We’re tempted to make our outward experience our indicator of our current relationship with God. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a member here for 50 years, or whether you check all those presbyterian boxes. If you have a heart that has forgotten the goodness of Christ, you’re in dire danger. Left unchecked, our hearts will lead us away from the true, final rest that God promises those who finish faithful.
Second, we should check our hearts and encourage each other because rest is promised.
Rest is Promised
Rest is Promised
The concept of ‘rest’ is something we have really let go as a society. I listened to a podcast recently talking about a study that had been done of the lifestyles of medieval peasants. It turns out that peasants living in the middle ages, far from the caraciture of being these overworked and downtrodden victims, had more leisure time than people living today.
There was a variety of reasons for this, but it went to show that our age isn’t an age that has been freed from work because of our technological expertise, but exactly the opposite - our technological expertise has turned us into perpetual workers. The work is never complete if it follows you everywhere.
We know that God is a God who values rest. Way back in Genesis 1 what did God do on the seventh day? He rested. Lots of people have questions about that - if God is omnipotent and all powerful, why did he take a rest? Well, this passage explains it for us.
First we have to get the right idea of ‘rest’ in our head. Rest in the Bible isn’t just ‘not having anything to do.’ Rest in the Bible is the thing that God does when his work is complete and ordered, and it was something particularly tied to the temple - God rests in the temple. So for the Israelites, in this psalm, the idea of the rest that was denied them was entering into the promised land. Canaan was denied to the Israelites, because of their sinful hearts.
But now, the author says:
3 For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’ ” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.
Those who believe, who entrust themselves to Jesus, enter that rest. We don’t jump in a plane and go over to Israel, no. The land promises find their fulfilment in Jesus - when we trust in Jesus we enter into the reality of what the promised land pointed to.
So let’s tie these ideas together a bit - he’s saying that if you’re a believer in Jesus, then you have already begun to experience the rest that God engaged in on the seventh day of Genesis 1. That is, there’s a new spiritual reality in your life which is concerned not just with your situation, but your heart - you can be at peace knowing that everything that can be done to secure your eternity has been done, and whatever you face in day to day life can’t undermine that.
God is concerned for your heart, because regardless of how good it is now to know that you’re in God’s hands, there’s a reality waiting that’s even better:
11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
This rest you’ve got now in Jesus pales into insignificance to the rest that meets us at the end of the road [Joy].
So check your heart, encourage each other. Jesus gives us rest.
Third, there’s an urgency to the call to check our hearts and encourage each other.
“Tomorrow” isn’t Certain
“Tomorrow” isn’t Certain
This was a hard lesson for me to learn when I became a Christian. I finished high school with the world firmly fixed in my sights. I had grown up with great teaching of the Bible, I knew who Jesus was, but I didn’t want anything to do with him. I was only really concerned with doing what I wanted to do; I knew I did need to think seriously about Jesus, but that was something that could wait until another day.
But, in God’s kindness, I was made to realise very quickly that God doesn’t guarantee that I’ll live to see that day. I accidentally stepped out in front of a speeding bus one day, dead to rights, and the only reason I’m still standing here is because the bus driver swerved around me.
Vaughan got a message that day - TODAY is the day I needed to come to Jesus. If that bus had hit me, I would be in hell for my sin. God was so merciful to me, and gave me the opportunity to repent.
6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7 again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
See the mercy of God in these two verses? God sees that there are some who have hardened hearts, who aren’t yet following Jesus, and he gives them today. Friends, if you’re here today and you are wondering what God’s plan is for your life, here it is: that you would follow Jesus. Everything else will flow from that. God isn’t giving you today so that you can use it to follow your own desires, he gives you today so that you would see the beauty and wonder of the risen king Jesus, and come to him with your sin and shame.
Don’t bank on tomorrow. It’s not guaranteed. Come to him today.
Finally, check your heart and encourage each other, because God knows.
God Knows
God Knows
11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
There’s a lot going on in these verses, but I’ll try to get to the core of it.
He says we should strive forward, checking our hearts and encouraging each other to finish the Christian life strong, v12 because the word of God is living and active, and digs right down deep into the “thoughts and intentions of the heart.” What does that mean?
I think what he’s getting at is that we can’t fool God. We can’t play external Christianity, where we follow Jesus on Sunday mornings and live like atheists for the rest of the week. You carry the same heart into here that you carry around you in the world. And God’s word is living, the Bible is aimed to cut right down deep into those thoughts and motivations you think are hidden from everywhere else.
I think the “word of God” here is particularly talking about the Psalm he’s just been sharing with us. That’s why he says in v13 that no creature is hidden from his sight - that psalm applies equally to you as it does to the original readers.
Friends, God has given you an opportunity today to be drawn closer to Jesus, or to be pulled away by your heart. The Bible says that your heart is a dangerous thing - it can trick you. God has reassured us today; there is no danger in diving deep into our own motivations and sins, the very things we’re tempted to ignore or hide, because he already knows what we’re like. He doesn’t play games. He knows what we’re like deep down and showed such love for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus that he’s willing to forgive, wipe clean, and restore everybody who comes to him.
Don’t be afraid to check your heart. Encourage each other to do the same. Because knowing Jesus and the rest he gives us is so much more precious than putting on a good outward appearance.
